Undercover officers regularly deceived women into sexual relationships because of a culture of “endemic” sexism within the Metropolitan police, a public inquiry has heard.
A barrister representing 25 women described how “entrenched” misogyny and a cult of masculinity pervaded the police force, amounting to institutional sexism.
On Tuesday, Charlotte Kilroy KC, for the women, told the inquiry that senior officers in charge of the undercover officers who spied on leftwing campaigners were aware of the deceptions but did nothing to stop them.
She told the inquiry that “women were used casually by the undercover officers according to their personal preferences … to maintain cover, gain access or obtain information.”
The inquiry, headed by the retired judge Sir John Mitting, is examining the activities of 139 undercover officers who spied on more than 1,000 predominantly leftwing groups over four decades.
In covert operations that started in 1968, the officers were sent on deployments, typically lasting four years, to infiltrate the groups and collect information about their activities.
This week, the inquiry is hearing closing submissions on the first phase of its work which centred on the covert deployments between 1968 and 1982.
The inquiry has heard that during that period, undercover officers frequently started sexual relationships with women without disclosing to them that they were police spies. An officer in the Special Demonstration Squad, the covert unit that infiltrated political groups, has previously said his colleagues made “gross and offensive” jokes about the women.
The officer, Graham Coates, said the jokes and banter were said in the presence of managers who knew about the relationships but deliberately turned a blind eye.
Two undercover officers who had relationships with women during that era have been described by their colleagues respectively as a sexual predator and a carnivore.
At least 20 undercover officers deceived women into intimate relationships while they infiltrated political groups in the decades up to 2010. At least three of them fathered children with women they met while undercover.
In her submission, Kilroy said: “When they unlawfully interfered with the public’s longstanding constitutional rights, the Metropolitan police also took the misogyny which riddled and corrupted the entire organisation, and transported it directly into the private homes and private lives of women.
“Instead of choosing officers who would respect the women they encountered and instead of taking all necessary precautions to counter the obvious risk of sexual relationships, both the Metropolitan police, and the men sent into their lives, had contempt for them”.
Drawing parallels with modern day scandals, Kilroy said: “The endemic misogyny in the Metropolitan police, and the culture of ‘them and us’ has to be eradicated for the safety of the public. As the crimes of David Carrick and Wayne Couzens have shown, these attitudes, and the tolerance for them in the MPS, have horrific consequences for women. They can literally be a matter of life and death.”
She highlighted a report by a thinktank, the Policy Studies Institute, that was commissioned by Scotland Yard in 1983. The thinktank researchers observed Met officers for two years.
Their report showed that the Metropolitan police was “dominated by a ‘cult of masculinity’ which glamourised violence and male physical courage, placed heavy emphasis on drinking as a test of manliness, and involved extreme denigration and sexualisation of women including women police officers,” Kilroy added.
The inquiry continues.
